Beyond Ages: Engaging Employees at all Career Stages

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Julie McCracken

For years, we’ve all heard and read about Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and now, more recently Gen Z. We’ve looked at generational similarities and differences for everything from spending habits to brand preferences to communications styles. Employee engagement research has been no different. But, while there is a tendency to default to age as the driver in engaging employees, at Padilla, we believe there’s a key element missing – career stage. For example, you may have two employees of a similar age at completely different stages in their career. They may share generationally-driven workplace needs, but a new hire has different preferences and motivators than someone who’s been at the company for many years.

There’s a ton of information available on employee engagement, what we define as the emotional commitment an employee has to an organization and its goals. And there should be – employee engagement is critical to business success; highly-engaged workforces improve recruitment, retention and company growth. We believe, however, that it’s time to look at employee engagement from a more well-rounded perspective, considering both age and stage, in creating a strategy that will build, grow and protect your business.

To do this, we partnered with our in-house global market research firm, SMS Research Advisors, to conduct a nationwide survey of people of varying ages, positions/levels and industries. Our goals were to:

Better understand the various stages people pass through during their career;

Gain insight into the engagement preferences at each stage;

Understand how leadership behavior and attitudes, organizational goals and an employee’s role influence engagement.

The Engage by Stage research results were extremely informative – and we plan to break them down for you on The Buzz Bin in the coming weeks. But, if you can’t wait (and you shouldn’t!), my colleague Dan Reilly, vice president of client services, SMS Research Advisors and I will be walking through our findings in detail today – for the first time – during a live webcast with HCI. There’s no cost to join, and it’s not too late! Click here to register.